Aesthetica Art Prize 2019

Covering a range of themes from technology, urbanisation and digitisation to population growth and ecological destruction and climate change, the artworks presented in the 2019 edition of the Aesthetica Art Prize Exhibition (8 March – 14 July, York Art Gallery)draw on both personal and universal narratives. In the age of globalisation, culture is becoming homogenised and identity is fluid. What does this mean for the individual?

Maryam Tafakory’s I Have Sinned a Rapturous Sin, meanwhile, brings together fragments of Forugh Farrokhzad’s poem Sin, as well as images of a male carder preparing cotton for a mattress. The film is set against religious clerics instructing women to suppress their sexual desires.Jenn Nkiru’s Rebirth is Necessaryis a dreamlike film centred on the magic of Blackness in a realm where time and space are altered. Past, present and future are re-ordered, offering something that is both visceral and soulful.

Diverse geographies also come into focus through an artists’ film piece from Turner-Prize nominees Jane and Louise Wilson.Suspended Island depicts the relationship between the Houses of Parliament, Trinity House in Newcastle, and the abandoned coastal fortifications on Governors Island, Manhattan. The work discusses the perception of an island at this time, during Brexit negotiations. Similarly, Sim Chi Yin’s video installation Most People Were Silentpairs two landscapes. From the north peak of Mount Paektu – an active volcanic mountain dividing North Korea and China – audiences look into North Korea, which has conducted six nuclear tests since 2006.

Christiane Zschommler, Beyond Orwell Series.

Noriyuki Suzuki’s installation Oh My ( )is one of the pieces expanding upon changing modes of communication and personalised languages. The work monitors the Twitter feed in real time, sounding out the phrase “oh my (god)” in one of 48 languages every time the word “god” is tweeted. The artwork considers the complexities and intangibility of religion in the digitised world. Daniel Mullen’s painting 37-67is a representation of synaesthesia; each colour is attached to a certain numerical symbol.

New developments in technology are intrinsic to many of the shortlisted pieces. Sebastian Kite’s Horizons investigates light, kinetics and performance, considering perceptions of time, sound and colour through the formation of white light.Mark Bloomfield’s, Conform 1-4 draw inspiration from textiles and engineering as a sculpture that changes shape with each new interaction, encouraging play, observation and feedback. Nicolas Bernier’sSStructures Infinies ()refers to the finite physical structure that is encapsulating the infinite possibilities of intellectual structures created by humankind.

Noriyuki Suzuki, Oh My ( ).

María Molina Peiró’sOne Year Life Strata is a visual metaphor for the act of forgetting. The project mines data and invites viewers to investigate one year of the artist’s life through an AI vision system that favours patterns and numbers rather than personal memories.Yunhan Liu utilises reconstructed forms of nature to evoke sensory experiences and a greater spiritual awareness. By manipulating organic phenomena, her work, Horizon, encourages viewers to question their relationship with the digital age, using the sun as a model through which to explore the immediate sublime experience.

Dialogues between nature and the human condition come to the fore in the works ofRebecca Reeve and May Parlar. Reeve’s Through Looking series introduce blinds as an almost democratic character, marking scenery through equal units of space and shrouding the viewer with a limited view. Parlar’s Collective Solitudeis a series of self-portraits created with this innovative visual language, experimenting with the contrasting and uncanny elements of inclusion and exclusion, real and unreal, settled and nomadic.

Teppei Yamada

Yunhan Liu

Sebastian Kite

Rebecca Reeve

Noriyuki Suzuki

Nicolas bernier

May Parlar

Maryam Tafakory

Mark Bloomfield

Giulio Di Sturco

Ludivine Large-Bessette

Maria Molina Peiro

Jenn Nkiru

Jane & Louise Wilson

Christiane Zschommler

Chi Yin Sim

Find out more about the 2019 shortlist here. | Find out about the 2019 longlist here.

The Aesthetica Art Prize Exhibition is on display 8 March – 14 July at York Art Gallery. For more information, click here.